Michael Gillespie is a contributing editor at The Independent Monitor, the national newspaper of Arab Americans. His work also appears regularly in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.  His analysis and opinion pieces have appeared in on-line venues including Atlantic Free Press, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Media Monitors Network, and Information Clearinghouse.  A 1999 graduate of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Iowa State University where he was inducted a member of Kappa Tau Alpha, the National Honor Society in Journalism and Mass Communication (1998), he had previously worked in radio as a reporter at WUOT-fm, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s National Public Radio affiliate station, and as project director for community radio station WDVX-fm in Clinton, TN.  His work has been broadcast by Swiss Radio International.  Gillespie co-founded the Knoxville Writers Guild (1992) and served as Executive Director of the Tennessee Writers Alliance (1994-1995).  During the 1980s, he pursued an eclectic course of study for several years at Harvard University, including coursework in Psychology, the Plays of William Shakespeare, the English Bible, Expository Writing, World Theater, and the History of Political Terrorism.  In 2004, he updated his formal study of Political Terrorism with additional coursework.  He lives and works in Iowa where for many years he was an active member of the Ames Interfaith Council, which he served as Vice Chair (2001, 2003) and Chair (2002).